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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Charlotte Brontë's Life Through Clothes with Eleanor Houghton
01:10:03
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April Callahan
The History of Fashion is a production of dressed media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.
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Cassidy Zachary
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are friends, fashion historians and your
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April Callahan
hosts, April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary, dress listeners. April, the Bronte sisters are having a moment.
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Cassidy Zachary
Yes, they surely are. And of course you were referring to the famed 19th century trio of sisters, the British novelist and poets Charlotte, Emily and Anne, whose works remain cornerstones of English literature and the popular imagination. Most recently, talk of Emily's 1847 book Wuthering Heights has been everywhere thanks to the super hyped recent film adaption starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elodi. But it is not Wuthering Heights and its author, Emily, to whom we turn our attention today, but rather her sister Charlotte, the author behind another famous classic, Jane Eyre.
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April Callahan
And I have to tell you, this is one of my all time favorite books books. But as many times as I have actually read this book, and it's been well over a dozen since I was a teenager, I've read it so many times I actually never knew how autobiographical this book really was. And that is thanks to reading the recently published book at the Heart of Today's Episode, which is Charlotte Bronte's Life Through Clothes by renowned Bronte scholar, historian and illustrator Eleanor Houghton. Eleanor joins us today to discuss this incredible book which is honestly one of the most creative and compelling biographies piece I have read in a very long time. And as the title suggests, Eleanor positions Charlotte's surviving clothing as, quote unquote, witnesses to her life, using them to paint an incredibly beautiful, at times heartbreaking story of one of the most beloved authors in history.
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Cassidy Zachary
And when you say paint cast, you mean literally. Something that is so unique and special about this book is that Eleanor illustrated every single clothing item featured in the book, down to its smallest detail. And not only do her illustrations provide an incredibly charming accompaniment to the text, they are also part of her methodology in that some of these garments do not either survive or they only survive in fragments or in a description. So she used additional historical research to really bring these Garments to life on the pages of the book.
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April Callahan
Yes. And something I also really loved that actually surprised me was that she also uses science to get up close and personal with the fibers and dyes used in the extant garments to look into the stories literally woven into many of these pieces in really unexpected ways. So this book takes readers as far south as the mountains of Peru and even to indigenous cultures in the southwest United States. So Eleanor really explores a myriad of influences, some that are global, some that are incredibly intimate and personal, all of which came to bear on Charlotte's dressed life.
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Cassidy Zachary
And we are so pleased that Eleanor joins us to share some of these stories with us today. Eleanor, welcome to Dressed.
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April Callahan
Eleanor, welcome to Dressed. I am so excited to talk to you today.
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Eleanor Houghton
I am so excited to be here. It's wonderful.
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April Callahan
And I just want to start by saying congratulations on an exquisitely beautiful book. I have not read a book that is this beautifully illustrated, thoroughly researched in a very long time, so this was such a pleasure for me.
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Eleanor Houghton
Oh, thank you. That is very nice of you to say. It was a long journey, but a pleasure to write most of the time. Yeah.
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April Callahan
You actually shared in the book that it was nine years in the making, which is incredible amount of time to work on one project. Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind this book?
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Eleanor Houghton
Yeah, of course. As with all things, it started with a lot of trails, so there's a lot of roots to it. I read English at Oxford, which was wonderful, and I absolutely loved it. And I think that teaches you about meaning, obviously with literature, it's a wonderful place to start. But then after Oxford, I rather strangely went off to become a milliner, which is not a typical post Oxford route at all. That taught me something very different about clothing and how it shapes the body and how the body is shaped by it. And so that gave me a different perspective, a very different perspective and quite a hands on perspective on the importance of dress. And then I was actually very ill and had to rethink life and went back to academia and went to do an MA in 18th century studies, where as part of that I ended up working with a dress historian. He was just brilliant and we worked really well together. And she really taught me to see clothes in a completely different way and really to read them almost like a text so that it reignited the literature side of my brain, but looking at a very different medium. And so when I went on to do my doctoral studies, I wanted to find a subject that brought those two sides of my interests together and that was it took a long time to find the right subject because I wanted to find a person that I could study who had a big collection of clothing. And that's quite a difficult thing to find because I'd really specialized in the 19th century during my English degree. I really wanted to focus on that period because it was the area I was most excited by. And so finding the right person was quite a challenge. But I did, amazingly, stumble across the Bronte collection and how no one had studied that before, I do not know. But it was an amazing find. And to see that there were more than 150 garments left to one person, just amazing. And so I knew I'd found my subject because alongside all of that, that you've also got novels, letters, portraits, self portraits, this mass of other evidence which allows you to build a really incredible picture. But this clothing offered a completely new perspective and I knew that clothing would offer a new perspective on this person that we feel we knew quite well, really. So, yeah, so that's how it came about.
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April Callahan
Yeah. And can you tell us a little bit more about the Bronte collection and what is com it is comprised of and how it was created? Because I think the story, the backstory and the provenance, a lot of these pieces, some of which were dispersed around the world. Some pieces are found in walls and homes, others are found in the United States. So how can you tell us a little bit about the journey for this archive to come together, to even be there for your project?
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Eleanor Houghton
That's what's been so amazing. So the Bronte Society was one of the earliest literary societies to start, so that helped. So Charlotte died when she was young, so she was only 38 when she died, which meant that her clothing was kept at a time when she was still famous. So that was a big part of it. But so was the fact that after she died, her clothing was quite quickly dispersed, but quite locally. So most of it went to her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and her family servant, Martha Brown. But after they passed away, it was disseminated, but fairly locally, generally within Haworth or within with Arthur's family. So most of it stayed in two places. But then, as always, with clothing, value changed. So over time, things started to be more about Charlotte Bronte. They became worth something rather than just as clothing and were bought by other people. And that's when things started to migrate much further out to America and France and other places. But because the Bronte Society was formed quite early, there was then a place for all these things to come back to, and they started to collect all these things back up and also buy things and be denoted. And so quite quickly after her death, really after Charlotte's death, there was this sort of place which meant that things started to be collected relatively soon. Had she died when she was older, those clothes might not have been kept, but because she was still very famous when she died, they were kept and seen as more significant, although initially I should say they were seen as items of clothing generally. So their worth was in the fact that they were expensive or relatively expensive and could have useful wear. So some things haven't survived and a lot of things have survived in quite wonderful condition. There is some alteration to some things, but some things haven't been altered at all. And as you say, there's amazing stories within that. Things found in the walls, where a wall was blocked up and there was a box of dresses in there, so they never left the parsonage. And those are unaltered. But there are things that have migrated very far. Her corset went all the way to America and then came back. So, yeah, one of the hardest things was working out which bits belonged to Charlotte and when she had them and all of those things. So, yeah, this is why it's taken nine years, because there's so many things and they range from chemises, stockings, all the way up to big objects like gowns or shawls, bonnets, everything. So it's really quite amazing and it does cover the course of her life. Obviously there is more towards the end, for obvious reasons, because none of us keep. Keep all our clothes throughout our lives. But, yeah, there's. There are part pieces from all the way through her life, which is amazing, really amazing.
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April Callahan
And the Bronte Society, is it at her family home? I can't remember.
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Eleanor Houghton
So, yes, it's based there, but initially it was in a museum in the town and then eventually they acquired where she. Yeah, where she lived most of her life, the Haworth Parsonage, and it's still based there today. That's where the library is and that's where most of the collection is. There are some other bits of scattered around, but the vast majority is held at the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth.
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April Callahan
Amazing. And so you have this massive archive, as you said. It's actually not that common to have a massive archive like this connected to one woman, one family. And so I want to talk to you about your decision to illustrate, literally illustrate these garments versus photographing them, which is what we so typically see in fashion history books such as this. So can you talk about that decision now.
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Eleanor Houghton
And it was a very deliberate decision. It didn't necessarily. For the book. It was. It didn't necessarily start off as a deliberate decision. It started off as a way of collecting data because inevitably, closing it's difficult. I would go up to Haworth for a week. I live right down the south of England, so I'd go up to Haworth for weeks at a time. It's all the way up in Yorkshire. And I'd come home with this information and photographs and whatever. And when you get back, you're trying to decipher everything, pull it all together. And actually, I began to found quite early on that it can be quite difficult to work out what you're looking at, whether a photo should be up or down, whichever. So it started by just drawing things from my own way of collecting data, showing where seams were, all those kinds of things. But then it started to become really important, part of my methodology, really, and making me really stop and look closely at the clothes. And then when it came to the book, I started to realize that, unwittingly, I'd ended up being part of this very long tradition of drawing clothing in museum context. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a very common thing to do. And I think when I realized that it captures clothing in a completely different way, there's an intimacy about it. A photograph can sometimes make things look. I think old clothes especially look a little bit like a jumble sale or the kind of clothes you might buy in what we call a charity shop, I think you might call a thrift store. And that you lose something of the kind of vivacity and the human quality, it becomes just a lump of clothes. And so then when we were making the book, my editor and I talked a lot about how to bring that back to life, but also to allow readers to have that ability to look inside things and to maybe have some of the wonder that I'd experienced. And so we actually decided that we would just go that way. So it was a deliberate decision, and it has lots of reasons, but I hope it's part of the storytelling. That was my aim, really. I think it works, but that's not for me to say.
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April Callahan
Well, as someone who just read this book, it was incredibly. These illustrations are incredibly beautiful. It is such a wonderful and evocative addition to the text. And I think there's something about your illustrative style. It makes everything really consistent. And it's also genius in terms of. It gives you room for interpretation of garments like her wedding dress that doesn't survive, but, you know, through description. So you're able to do this historical research and analysis and then use that to recreate what you think her dress would look like.
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Eleanor Houghton
It's interpretation, isn't it? And I think that is helpful. And reconstruction. I hadn't really thought about that. But yeah, you're absolutely right. That's really important element because some things are in fragments and those would have had. No, I'd have had no way of telling their story if I hadn't been able to reconstruct it. And that's not based on nothing. Whenever I've reconstructed something, I've tried very hard to base it very strongly on evidence wherever possible. So, yes, of course there's a measure of interpretation, but there's also a measure of basing that in fact. So it's a balance.
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April Callahan
I was gonna say evidence based interpretation. We had an historical archaeologist on here who recreates clothing that does not survive from the. The Bronze Age. Right. And that's what they rely on, is that sort of interpretation. But it's all rooted in evidence and tons of research. So I thought this was an incredibly creative but also very beautiful way to tell this story. And I'm obsessed with your illustrations now. I follow you on Instagram. They are not reserved just for this book you share them with. So I love that you write about clothing as witnesses to Charlotte's life and you write that quote. Now, at long last, the clothes that covered Charlotte's body, some of which still bear the imprint of her foot or the sweat from her pores, have been summoned to the witness box to give their testimonies. Their myths are shattered, long preconceptions challenged, any breathing, thinking, feeling, three dimensional woman is recalled to life. So today we are going to listen to some of those testimonies. But first I'm hoping you can root us in a time and place with an introduction to Charlotte, her childhood and her family life. And how did her upbringing really foster her imagination and love for writing?
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Eleanor Houghton
That's a really good question. Not when I've actually been asked very often, but that's a really good question. So Charlotte was born in 1816. She's one of six children, middle child of six children. And she's born into a very happy family, busy family, middle class, but with not a lot of money. And so she's born in Thornton, which is a little village, sort of town village, and in the middle of Yorkshire, near the moors. And she moves to Haworth where her father is vicar and curate and they live in the Parsonage there. And it's a very happy beginning, busy, happy family life. But then her mother dies in a very tragic way, very young, and she's very young herself when that happens. And then not that long afterwards, she loses two of her sisters. So loss plays a massive part in her early upbringing, her early life, and her father steps in and her aunt comes to help look after them, and they have some nursemaids. But really, that loss really overshadows her life always. And the fact that she has. She goes from being very much a middle child to having to step up and being the eldest. So that has huge bearing on her life. But it's not all sorrow and sadness. There's reading and imagination play a massive part in the. The Bronte children's lives. They're allowed to read almost without any kind of rules, so they've given huge access to books of all different types, periodicals, all sorts of things. She has her mum's ladies magazines from earlier in the century, and she pours over these. So she feeds this kind of romantic soul. And as everybody probably knows, the children work together to create these tiny little books and these amazing, complex imaginary stories set in these wonderful worlds. So it's a very rich play that they have as a group, and I think that's a very kind of mending experience for them. It's one of the ways that the children that remain really mend and. But they work within these quite controlled worlds. And we see that throughout Charlotte's life, partly in the way she dresses as well, is a kind of freedom, but also a constraint. So all of that feeds into her imagination, and we see that all of those things come out very strongly in her work. So there's a deep kind of emotion and a connection to that emotion, but also loss, imagination, freedom, it all melds together, all of which we see in her books later on.
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April Callahan
So, yeah, and I just taught a class on Jane Austen and I could not help but notice the many similarities between them, especially the ways in which they were raised, which is Jane Austen died, I think, the year after Charlotte was born. But there's a lot of similarities in that they come from big families and that they were encouraged from a young age to read and to have creativity, and that was really fostered and encouraged in both of their homes. So for them both to have this trajectory where they grow up to be writers, I thought was really interesting, because as a woman at this time, or a young girl, becoming a celebrated author is not necessarily something that is. Is offered to them as a possibility.
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Eleanor Houghton
No not at all. It's fairly uncommon. And I think that reading and that being given the freedom to read what they want is a really important part of. Yeah. What creates these authors really, as they get older. Yeah, there are a lot of similarities. There's differences in that Jane Austen obviously came from a much wealthier family. But yeah, there are a lot of similarities. And I think that early fostering of reading imagination, play is very important. And so, yeah, I think you can see the similarities really from quite early and often with a lot of other writers as well. It's amazing how often you start to see that something that really. Yeah, often with famous authors we look back and think, oh yes, but you can see right from childhood that was allowed and encouraged. Yeah. So very central to who they became.
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Cassidy Zachary
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April Callahan
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Cassidy Zachary
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April Callahan
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Eleanor Houghton
Yeah. So Charlotte had two experiences of school and the first one was very unhappy. She was very young when she went. It was a boarding school. It was soon after her mother died. But she was sent there really for quite a difficult reason, because when her mother died, they had less money because it's a long, complicated story, but there was less money. And basically they knew as a family that the children, the girls and boys, there was only one son. Branwell would end up having to work for their livings, which wasn't expected of the middle classes. So education was going to be really important because Patrick, the father, knew that the girls would end up having to be governesses, teachers, some kind of job. So education was key. There wasn't a lot of cash, as I said. So they were sent to a special School that was part a charity school, really, and because it was a charity school, even though she was fortunate to go there in some ways, because she had access to education at a time when not everybody had access to education, it was very much a school where you were marked out as a child who needed extra help to be there. And they were given uniforms which set them apart from everybody, not from everybody else in the school, everybody there was wearing it. But it very much set them apart within that society as girls who were in need of charity. And Charlotte found that very difficult very early on. And she was obviously a very sensitive child and I think she found being forced to wear something that she didn't want to wear very difficult. So we see that parallel in Jane Eyre where she talks about being at the school, and also it was a school that, with quite harsh conditions, the food was poor as a result of being there. Two of her sisters actually passed away because they caught illnesses whilst there. And so, yeah, it was a very difficult and first environment for her and a very unhappy one. And I think uniform was tied up with that sense of confinement constraints, having your personality pushed to one side and being forced to have this idea of growing up to work at a time when that was not something that was really expected of women. So they'd be stepping outside this domestic sphere. So all of that was quite difficult for her. And then, of course, link that with loss of two of her very close sisters. So that was a real challenge. So I think that early, early time at school was very hard, and we see that very strongly mirrored in Jane Eyre, as you will know later. She then left that school because her father was obviously concerned about losing his other children, so he brought them back. And it wasn't until she was 13 that she then went to school again into a very different sort of school, something much more akin to a sort of finishing school, I suppose you'd say. But there she had a very different set of problems because I think, really, for the very first time in her life, she really realized that she was plain, and very plain actually, compared to the other girls. And also that she had the wrong clothes. She'd been. There wasn't a lot of money, her aunt had dressed them and perhaps didn't have the best idea of style at the time. And so she was sent off to this school in clothes that looked very different to the other girls she was mixing with. And she was acutely aware of that. Again, she was acutely sensitive, so very aware of how people were perceiving her and her feelings about her own body and her appearance started to have real bearing and she got bullied. So again, we have a second view. Even though she won through to a happier place, we have this, this negative attitude again about at school. And though she wasn't forced to wear a uniform there, she, in a sense was, because she was expected to wear a certain set of clothing that the other wealthier girls had that she didn't have. So she was set apart again, which was really a challenge for her. And the only things that save her, and we see the same thing in Jane Eyre really, is that she is clever and she uses her wits and her intelligence and her ability to tell a good story to encourage people to. To like her. And it's that connection which eventually gives her the friends that she makes in school. So, yeah, that those two periods were very formative for Charlotte and for her relationship with clothing later, which is very complicated.
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April Callahan
I was gonna say her first experiences, as you learn, reading the book, were just not positive, right? They're not.
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Eleanor Houghton
Not at all.
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April Callahan
Clothing is not this form of self expression or joy in any way. It's very much her being forced into uniformity, which you call a badge of dishonor and inferiority. And then, as you said, she's mercilessly teased for her appearance and she cultivates this kind of low self esteem that will haunt her entire life. And we're gonna talk more about that a little later on because it just makes me so sad that this incredibly talented woman is having to grapple with this. But I think it's really interesting when you study people's younger lives, how formative these years are. Right?
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Eleanor Houghton
So true. And I think that's what really struck me is that when you just dug down a little bit deeper into those things, and actually clothing was a way into that, which was amazing. Clothing is such an intimate thing, isn't it, that it connects so deeply with our sense of self and our identity that the study of it inevitably forces us to think about these things in a different way. And it certainly led me to places that I did not expect to go. So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It has so much bearing on our later lives, even if we're not conscious of it ourselves, which barely are, I think, probably.
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April Callahan
And so speaking to your wonderful illustrations, you actually illustrate for us the winter uniform of the Clergy Daughter school. And you show us all the pieces and you write a description and explain to us what they are. It's just so wonderful. I have to tell you, reading this and having these Accompanying illustrations. So that's in that chapter. And then you move on. There's a couple other things I think illustrated in there. But then you have a chapter that features the governess Stretch. So can you tell us about this period in her life? And I think it's really interesting because you talk about her dress being quietly reformative in a way. So can you share a little bit more about the role of clothing while she was a governess?
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Eleanor Houghton
Her governess dress is fascinating. It really is. And this period of being a governess, again, as we talked about before, it wasn't something she really wanted to do. She wanted to be like the other girls she'd met at school. She wanted to. To marry and have a life where she really didn't have to work, but that wasn't the one for her. She had to work to survive. And so she ends up going to be a governess on two separate occasions in two places. And I was very fortunate to be able to find the dress and date it to this period, which makes it very likely that she was wearing it at this point. And it is a really interesting dress. It is quietly subversive because on the one hand, when you first look at it, it looks very plain. And what we'd expect is the archetypal governess dress of what we've come to understand now. But that's what's so fascinating about, is that actually Charlotte was one of the people that helped to create this very view of what the governess dress was and what that kind of uniform was. Because this is a relatively new post in that sense, especially for a middle class woman teaching middle class children. This is fairly new. And so she creates this uniform and she helps to create that through the writing of Jane Eyre. And this dress is at first glance very plain, but when you start to look closely, that there is personality and character. And we see that in the sleeves. They're beautifully pleated sleeves. The way it's made is so careful. There's piping, beautiful piping. It's just very meticulously made. And I think when I started to look closely at it, you realize that there is a subversion in that she's saying, look, I might have to work. But number one, I'm not a servant and I'm going to separate myself very strongly from that. But number two, whilst I might have to melt into the background a little bit because I'm not meant to be the star player in a family setting in that way, I'm still going to have a sense of presence and that dress really speaks those two things. And, yeah, that whole story of the dress is just so fascinating and opens up this whole world and I think then changes our reading of Jane Eyre and our understanding of the governess and the role of the governess and just how difficult it was for someone like Charlotte to navigate this world of expectation whilst also keeping her own sense of presence and identity. So, yeah, it's a fascinating garment. It really is.
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April Callahan
And can you talk a little bit more about how you were able to identify it as something that she personally owned? I'm assuming it has something to do with the size. And she was quite petite.
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Eleanor Houghton
She was very small. There's a lady called Harriet Martineau, who was quite a famous writer who she came to know, who called her the smallest woman she'd ever seen outside a fair, which was quite a harsh statement, but gives us an idea of just how tiny she was. So she was. Was 4 foot 8, 4 foot 9, so very small. I mean, obviously during that period, people were smaller, but she was still notably small. In all the letters and things that people refer to, they always talk about her being very diminutive in every sense. So she was very slight as well. So the governess dress obviously fits in terms of size, but what's also amazing about it is it had no number when it arrived at the parsonage. So normally things are logged in when they arrive, so we know when it came in and the numbers are sequential. So you normally know if it's an early D number, D being for dress. It's an early acquisition, but this never had a number that I could find in that obvious sense. And so that's how I ended up finding, as you mentioned earlier about finding a dress hold up in the wall, that this probably was one of them, because it had never left the parsonage. It had always been there, but in a wall. So, yeah, it's got an amazing history, but is definitely Charlotte's. But if you saw that alone, it would very much fit the perception we have of Charlotte, which is hard to smash. And obviously you have to see it within the context of all these other clothes, which are very different, but when we see it as a uniform, as a piece of uniform, I think it takes on absolutely new meaning. So, yeah, it really is an amazing piece.
- [31:48]
April Callahan
Yeah. And of course, you're referring to the fact that people think that Charlotte Bronte, like Jane Eyre, was quite plain. Right. Wore dull colors, wanted to blend in versus stand out myths that you do dispel, and which we will talk about in a Little bit. But first I want to talk about an item of clothing that you dedicate an entire chapter to. It witnessed a significant and particularly heartbreaking period in Charlotte's young adult life when she would, as you describe, quote, pass through a refining fire so hot, so deeply personal, that it would burn through the dross of youth and reveal the mature woman hidden deep within. So please tell us about her deceptively unassuming and now graying corset and what it experienced alongside its wearer. And actually, you talk about in the book how you spent hundreds of hours researching this one garment alone.
- [32:43]
Eleanor Houghton
Yes, this was probably the biggest eater upper of time, the whole thing. But it was an incredible journey. It's taken me on. And it's the trouble with talking about it like this is you, as you say, you don't unless you understand what this kind of job is. A single sentence can take weeks and weeks to find the answer to. So it's an incredible piece. Piece. It is. If I describe it, I'm sure you'll have some photographs that you can put along beside it. But it is a very, as you say, a graying, not a very pretty piece at all. It's the kind of thing that you would first look at and think it's really not very appealing. It's very utilitarian. It has a huge busk that goes down the front, which is very long. And when we think how tiny Charlotte was, it would have gone well below her pelvis. It would have made sitting down very difficult. And it has a lot of bones. But what is most remarkable about it is that it was woven in one piece, which in itself doesn't sound terribly exciting until you start to stop and actually think about corsets of the period. So it's actually historically important in its own right. But basically, at the time, obviously, most pieces, as corsets often are now, were pieced together, as in cut out, with the pieces made, much like we might make a dress. But when I looked closely at this, I could see there were no seams, which made it a fascinating piece to start with, because woven corsets are very rare, and for it to be this early was very unusual. So that took me on a whole journey of it, just as a piece of engineering, which is remarkable in and of itself. But for Charlotte, when we look at it as a piece of biography, for want of a better word, it really is so speaking, and it has such an important story to tell. So basically, it tells us us about the period of her life from about 1842. To 43, but beyond that too. But specifically then, because that's when I was able to pinpoint exactly when and where she acquired it, which really helped me to fit it into this very important period of her life. So she had gone to Brussels initially with her sister Emily to train to become a teacher really in a different way. Their plan was to set up a school. So she'd gone to perfect her French and her German, because that was very important part of education. So they'd both gone over there. It was a really big adventure for them because bear in mind they'd not really gone a lot further than Haworth. So for them this was huge. To go to another country and to go there for a long period of time. And it initially started off very well. They went to go and stay in a place called the Pensionat Heger, which was run by a gentleman called Constantin Heger and his wife Claire. And she was quite a fierce directrice. And it went very well to begin with. I think Heger realized how clever they both were and worked very well and gave them a huge amount of attention, especially Charlotte. And Charlotte was very excited by this male attention, which is not something she'd really had before. So as well as having her mind opened and expanded in this new way by this incredible teacher, he was a very gifted teacher. She also began to fall in love with him. And bear in mind, he's married, she's the daughter of a clergyman waiting to happen. So we start the this story there and then when I was able to pinpoint her corsets having been bought at that time, it really opens this story up because after a little while Emily goes back because their aunt dies. So they both go back to England. But after a period, Charlotte, because she has this passionate love for he, even though she doesn't admit that's the full reason, but she goes back, she wants to go and perfect her French. I'm not sure that was really the reason. And she goes back to Belgium. And from that point on really she is very lonely because he's wife obviously starts to twig that there's a bit more going on. It's very hard to know the depth of Charlotte and he's relationship. He certainly led her on. Whether it went far beyond that, we don't know. But her care for him did seem to tip almost into the slightly obsessional.
- [36:35]
April Callahan
And how old is she at this point?
- [36:37]
Eleanor Houghton
This is 42, so. Gosh, that's maths, isn't it? Terrible at maths. How old would she be in her early no, mid 20s, late 20s, late 20s. So, yeah, she's not really young at all, but she's not really had this exposure. So it's a very new experience and awakening of passion and it's very exciting. But it tips into something more difficult for her when he starts to shut her away a bit and his wife obviously not very happy with the whole experience. So she starts to be quite isolated and we start to see how her corset takes on a new role at this point, because not only is she a Protestant surrounded by Catholics, which to us now does. We don't even think about that. But then that was quite a big deal because there's this really sad little bit in one of her other books where in Villette, where she's talking and she's a governess in it in Belgium, and the other girls talk about her soul going to hell because she's not a Catholic. So she's surrounded by this sort of sense of alienation, isolation. She's an alien in a foreign land and she's got this deep, unrequited. So what starts off as a magical place starts to become really quite the reverse. And the corset, then we start to see when we look closely at the fact she starts to tight lace at this point. And the corset, because it is so utilitarian and harsh, allows her to have this kind of pulling in, firming, in tightening, straightening. And we start to see the almost punishing impact it would have had on her little body. She sews little bust pads into the inside to give her that feminine shape again, perhaps because she's wanting to emphasize her femininity partly for he, but partly probably also because she's still very emaciated and she needs to create that kind of more perfect shape. So we just see so much tension in it. And there's rust beneath the busk, there's marks across the corset that show extreme tight lacing, which is very rare for the period. It's easy to presume that. That everybody tight laced at that point. But that is not the case at all, as I'm sure you've talked about lots of times before. So, yeah, all of this comes out from this one garment really. So it's so speaking. I think of all the garments in the collection, there are so many. And to be honest, I could whitter on about all of them, but this is probably the one that is the most speaking and just is the most poignant. Actually, I think it's such a poignant garment just to See the kind of punishment, but also the strength she takes from it. So, yeah, it's an amazingly telling speaking piece.
- [39:07]
April Callahan
Yeah, that was definitely one of the most surprising elements in the book because as a fashion historian, I'm constantly dispelling the myth that all women tight laced in the 19th century. Right. But the caveat to that is that women certainly did tight lace. Right. It's just. Was not common. It was not as common as people would like us to believe as the popular narrative. So it's very surprising to find it here with Charlotte. But once you explain it and talk about corset as this almost armor for her, but also a form of control, something she could control when she had little other control, was quite fascinating. And again, this idea that clothing is a witness to her life is most evidenced here. And it bears the marks of this period of her life, which is just so incredible, literally.
- [39:56]
Eleanor Houghton
And what's amazing about it as well is that it's a garment that wasn't worn by other people. So some of the other things she has she other people have worn since that this was kept separate because they felt it was a very intimate piece. So the marks we see are Charlotte's. And so that is even more remarkable. You're so right. That's what makes it so speaking, I think.
- [40:14]
April Callahan
So we have now talked about her younger years, and if you're a Jane Eyre fan like myself, you're probably recognizing a lot of things and narratives going on in here in her life that will come out in Jane Eyre. And so we're of course, here today because she did not stay a governess. She becomes a highly regarded, quite famous published author alongside both of her sisters, of course. And can you tell us about her path to publishing her work and the clothing that witnessed this important period in her journey?
- [40:48]
Eleanor Houghton
Yeah, absolutely. So Charlotte's path to publication, as it is for many authors, but especially then, was not straightforward. It was complicated, it was long winded, and it was actually quite difficult. So she's writing and I think what she comes home from being a governess, the school doesn't work out, and so she makes the decision, along with her sisters, that they're going to be authors. That's how they're going to make their money. And that's quite important to realize that there was this important moment in her life where she made that choice. And so writing then stops. It shifts from being something that she does almost for pleasure and there's almost something she has to do. That's something I really noticed all the way through it's for Charlotte, it's almost like a need to write. It's not something that she does just for pleasure, it's something she needs to do as part of herself, as an outlet for her creativity, for her thoughts, for her emotion. But what's important about this later period is that she's also juggling normal life. So what we see in her clothing here is her normal clothing. So we've talked about her governess dress and again, we're very used to thinking of Charlotte when we think of her as always dressed in brown, always dressed in sort of dark colours, partly because of the pillar portrait that is so famous, that features her and her sisters and actually a shadowy image of Branwell in the background that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, in which she's wearing a dark gown. And because of what we perceive with Jane Eyre, we connect them so closely, that's really changed our view of her. But the reality is when she wasn't working, when she wasn't wearing the uniform, she was wearing dresses that are much more colorful. In fact, there's a reference from an old lady who knew them and knew the girls as they were growing up and said they were always dressed in out but print, meaning that they were always wearing patterns and colours and bright prints, of which of course that period was really well known. Everybody wore pattern and lots of color because it's also a time and Charlotte's growing up right in bang in the middle of it of Industrial Revolution, where we've got new dyes and new tattoos, technology and amazing abilities to create this wonderful array of fabrics and in beautiful bright colours that were relatively long lasting. So she lands in the middle of this. So her writing is. When she's writing, we shouldn't really imagine her in sort of dark gowns, we should be imagining her in these bright colors, pretty prints. So there's an amazing dress which is one of my favourites, called the paisley dress, which is very pretty and it features a very bright white paisley print of red and green and turquoisey blue, duck eggy blue. And it's so pretty. And I think when we start imagining Charlotte writing in that, it totally, again, it totally changes our perception of her as a writer. And of course, as she's writing, she's also living in this domestic life because part of her life is writing, but the rest of the life is running the home. So clothing takes up a lot of time in that period as well. Well, in that she. Well, in all throughout her life, where she's making clothes, she's making shirts, for her dad and her brother, she's helping her sisters make clothes. So though she's writing and she's doing a lot of that, she's also mending, washing, all the things that are needed for clothing, which we do now, but times it by 10, just with the amount of time that took up. So, yeah, that is all part of it. And so she writes out of this domestic sphere, really, and in that sense, she's very like Jane Austen. Both of them are writing out of this connection with clothing, because women had a deep connection with clothing, even deeper than we have now, because they often had to make it. So, yeah, that's all connected, I think. But, yes, colour print, pretty things, shawls that are patterned and colorful, very different to what we imagine.
- [44:24]
April Callahan
Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think it's really important to mention, too, that initially, when she publishes Jane Eyre, she does it anonymously, and there's a couple different reasons for that, but one of them, and you talk about this in the book, is she's very self conscious and you actually write that quote. The issue of appearance was central to Jane Eyre. Bronte deliberately set out to disprove the prevailing paradigm that all heroines should be beautiful. And so this is something that turns out was a deeply personal pursuit, personal belief. Can you talk to us more about that?
- [45:01]
Eleanor Houghton
I think one of the things she wanted to dispel was that heroin had to be beautiful. In fact, she said she wanted to set out to disprove that theory, to prove that actually a woman could be more than just how she looked. And that is laudable. It's something we would all agree with today, but there's complex reasons for that. And that's partly because Charlotte felt completely shut out from that world of beauty. She felt very separate from it. And in fact, fact, when you read her book very carefully, this book came out of my thesis, which looked a lot at the issue of plainness. And I wrote a chapter called the Plainness Manifesto. Because what you start to realize when you look at it is that Charlotte did deliberately set out to show that you could have a heroine who was engaging and someone that we could really connect with and have a real rapport with his readers, who wasn't beautiful, but was intelligent and capable and had moral fiber and all the things that would draw us to her. But also she has quite a hatred of beautiful people too, which I guess is understandable because she's watched people be treated differently throughout life because they're beautiful. And she's felt very keenly what it's like to be treated in a very different way, because she very much wasn't. And it's difficult to talk about this, but Charlotte really wasn't. Wasn't pretty. In fact, she was described as being ugly. Very ugly, very plain. Those are words that were actually used about her. She had a lot of problems with her appearance, and she was very conscious of them. And she was very conscious of how people perceived her to the point where, whilst some of that might have been true, it certainly tips into body dysmorphia, where her perceptions of herself are so unkind and she's so harsh, but she fears the censure of others throughout her life. And I think Jane Eyre very much comes out of a very deep place of pain. And I think that's why it's so resonant, because it doesn't come out of something abstract. It comes out of something for her that is real and deep and painful.
- [47:05]
April Callahan
Which is why the ending is so beautiful, too. Right. As she writes this beautiful ending for maybe not just Jane Eyre, but for herself as well.
- [47:15]
Eleanor Houghton
Absolutely. And I think, again, once you start having your eyes open to just the impact of that plainness on her whole life. But the reality is, we would not have Jane Eyre if Charlotte had been beautiful because she would have had a life where she would have married. Her life would have panned out very differently, or probably would have panned out very differently. As it is because of that, we have this wonderful legacy that we would never have had if her life had been different. There's a kind of an amazing irony in that. But it was hard for her, I think, and it's hard not to have real sympathy for her. And I think it deepens your understanding of the book when you grasp the depth of that for her.
- [47:52]
April Callahan
Yeah, for sure. And you actually write in the book how that even before she wrote Jane Eyre, she told her sisters, I will show you a heroine as plain and small as myself. And you referenced several times that Jane Eyre is very pretty much her doppelganger. So much of herself is written in that book, which I. Again, I just had no idea you brought this entirely new perspective to this book. So now I have to read it again, knowing all these things.
- [48:17]
Eleanor Houghton
Oh, no. It's amazing, isn't it, how starting from a place of clothing can just take you to so many places. And I certainly didn't expect this when I started the project. I didn't. So, yeah, it's. It is incredible.
- [48:38]
Avery Trufelman
In a time when the United States military is being sent into American cities, when civilians and Soldiers are being pitted against each other. It's strange that we've never dressed more alike. We all wear performance clothes. We all wear outdoor clothes, whether or not we're outside civilians and soldiers. I'm Avery Trufelman. I make a podcast about clothing called Articles of Interest. And in the this new season, I trace the interwoven histories of the military and the outdoor industry and how they built each other. Find articles of interest wherever you get your podcasts. And the season is called Gear.
- [49:19]
April Callahan
So Charlotte's almost debilitating anxiety about her appearance was one of the factors, as I mentioned, of her wanting to remain anonymous. But she becomes incredibly famous, rather against her will. She's outed or forced out herself in the 1850s, and fame completely changes her life for the better and the worse. And this is something witnessed by two dresses that you feature in the book as you write. These dresses, quote, offer unprecedented insight into her paradoxical relationship with fame. As different as night and day, they elucidate two sides of this changed life. Those parts she came to love and those parts she came to loathe. And what. What way?
- [50:01]
Eleanor Houghton
Oh, that's such a. It's such a big question, because it's a big chapter. But I think fame for Charlotte was, as you say, so complicated. On the one hand, she'd worked all her life, really, to this kind of amazing pinnacle, this point of deep success, where she was being recognized for something she was good at and lauded by people that she deeply admired. So on the one hand, she's loving that moment, if she's loving her talent, being recognized for the first time properly. But at the same time, for someone who struggles so deeply with her appearance and who struggled with the limelight generally, just generally in life, she's then thrust into this really difficult world and of London society as well. So she's not only thrust into this fame, but she's literally thrust into a world that she doesn't understand. She's grown up in Haworth. She's gone to big cities and things, and of course, she's been to Brussels bottles, but she's not been exposed to London society and the kind of glitz and the dazzle and just even just in terms of what she owns in her wardrobe, she's not ready. She's not ready to be thrown into this new world. So fame is complicated for Charlotte. And as you say, there's two dresses that I found really showed those two different sides. So the first one is her Thackeray dress, which is a dress that I should imagine a lot of people might have come across because it's often she. And it's a very beautiful piece. It is. It's very hard to describe, but it's got a little collar, it's two piece. It did have a full skirt. It has been quite dramatically altered over the years, but it has this really vivid, vibrant pattern of flowers and tendrils and leaves. It's very pretty and quite bold. And this is the dress that I was able to pinpoint she wore to meet William Makepeace Thackeray, the writer of Vanity Fair, whom she dedicated the book to Jane Eyre to. So he is her absolute literary hero. And I think it's fascinating that she takes this dress and this is the one that she chooses to wear for him. And I always thought that was really interesting. And this is the other important thing to remember. She's chosen it very soon after she's come out of mourning for her remaining three siblings. It's important to remember that. That poor Charlotte, not only has she lost her oldest two sisters, but then she loses three of her other three siblings very soon. And this is one of the dresses she wears post mornin. So it's bold, it's bright, and in that sense it's quite shocking. She's been in black for a long time and she chooses this dress. And I thought that was fascinating anyway. But then I started to do some scientific experiments on it and it again opened up this whole new world. Because when we started looking at it, I worked with some very wonderful electrochemists, we were able to work out that. Whereas I'd first thought that the fabric from which it's composed was made from wool and cotton, we did all sorts of experiments, but we came to the conclusion that it was actually made from alpaca fibres.
- [52:49]
April Callahan
So fascinating.
- [52:50]
Eleanor Houghton
And that allowed me to actually pinpoint the fabric having been woven within a nine mile radius of her home in Haworth. So when she goes to meet William Makepeace Thackeray, she's literally wearing a piece of home. So she is an alien land in the sense that she's meeting him in her publisher's house in London. She's going into this new world and she's taking a piece of home with her. And she rails at Thackeray. There's this very funny letter where she talks about telling Thackeray everything that he did wrong. Bear in mind, he's a very established author and she's this tiny little lady and he's 6 foot 4. And she goes in there and she has a little kind of fighting match about literature. And you can just imagine she's a little kind of pocket rocket, really, that goes in and does it, and she does it with wearing this gown, which I can't help feeling is significant, that she's wearing something for him, because. Because Charlotte understood clothing, she understood cloth. She's coming from an area where it's all being created in Britain, that's where it's coming from, the West Riding of Yorkshire. And she's brought a piece of home with her. So I found that absolutely amazing, really, when I unpacked it and realized nine miles from her home. So that really shows that side of fame that she conquers. She's strong, she's powerful, she holds her own mentally and intellectually. But then we see the other dress, which is very different and not at all what we expect of Charlotte. So when I found it, it wasn't really considered to have been Charlotte's. Nobody really knew what to do with it. And I think because it looks so different from anything we would have expected belonged to Charlotte. No one really knew anything about it. It'd never really been studied, none of the clothes had been studied, but no one had really thought about it, certainly never been on display, because no one felt comfortable showing it, really. And yet when I started to measure it and look into it again, I started to realise it must have been Charlotte's. So I did a lot of digging into it. But if I just describe it so it's a blue and white stripe gown with lace at the neck and a proliferation, faux flowers, ribbons, feathers. It is quite something. It really is quite something to behold. Very few of these kinds of things survive. But when I started to look even more closely, I realized it was clearly because of all these embellishments, a gown that was designed for the opera or ball, something very fancy. Not typical of Charlotte's wardrobe at all, because normally it wasn't required. So we knew it was place, fame and also the dating of it. You could see it was. And yet what was this rather strange dress? It wasn't off the shoulder, as most gowns of the kind of evening wear a variety would have been. It's got long sleeves, quite a high neck. It was a strange dress. And you see this lack of confidence in the sartorial codes and conventions of the day. She's not quite getting it right. And I started to think, why is that? Now Charlotte struggled with what to wear. It wasn't something she always found really easy. She didn't know, I think earlier she was more comfortable. But when she was thrust into this new world, the nuances of dress were hard for her to grasp. It was all new. New class of people, new type of people, new experiences. And you see that lack of confidence in this dress. It was made by a dressmaker, the first one I could see that has been made by a dressmaker. Up till then, she's made all her own clothes, so she's obviously had strong swaying from somebody. But then you also see that she's quite nervous. So we see also the slight prudishness of the high neck, the long sleeve. So it's a very complicated dress. It's giving off very mixed messages. And I think that gives us a window into what it was like for Charlotte to be thrust into this. This difficult world where she's being glared at, stared at, criticized. And that didn't always go down very well. There are letters that show she didn't do very well in these settings, to be honest. She found talking to people at dinner parties very difficult and excruciating, actually, sometimes. And I think you can see that that garment. There's this complication.
- [56:47]
April Callahan
That part was really hard to read, actually, because you're so happy for her. She finds all this success, like you said, you can really tell she's in her element with Thackeray, someone she considers a peer and a colleague and someone that she respects and who respects her. And then she's forced into this society where they have all these expectations for her, and they're disappointed because she's not meeting what they thought this accomplished young author should look like. And as we know, fashion plays such an important role in society in terms of your social status and your respectability and all of these things. And she. She's failing to meet these expectations. And so people aren't getting to really know her or experience all the amazingness that she is. So it's very sad.
- [57:32]
Eleanor Houghton
It's very sad. And I think that poignancy comes across in the dress and the confusion and also how other people start to shape and mold her. Because there's an interesting parallel between that dress and a scene in Villette where she's dressed by someone else. And I think, think this dress, you can see that is probably something that's happened. Either someone has guided her and said, you're not wearing the right things, because there is evidence of letters where it was apparent people were embarrassed by what she turned up in the people that took her. She wasn't wearing the right things. She didn't have the right things. So, yeah, it's Complicated. But there is a real poignancy there. And you're so right. I think it is a very sad chapter where we really see her vulnerability laid there. And it's quite uncomfortable to be aware of that, really.
- [58:17]
April Callahan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she does get married. I don't want to say she falls in love and gets married, but she does get married in 1854 to a man by the name of Arthur Bell Nichols. But as romantic an imagination as Charlotte might have had about love and marriage, Arthur was not exactly Jane Eyre's Edward Rothschild. And you write that she was a remarkable woman marrying an unremarkable man. Ouch.
- [58:47]
Eleanor Houghton
It's a bit harsh.
- [58:48]
April Callahan
Truth. Truth. But it was for this reason that you write her wedding dress embodies a plethora of paradoxical messages. Can you tell us about her marriage and her experience wedding dress shopping and kind of the unexpectedness that came out of that?
- [59:06]
Eleanor Houghton
Yeah. Again, there's a great complexity here, isn't there? It's really interesting. So Arthur Bell Nichols was her father, father's curate, and he fell in love with Charlotte long before she has any kind of thought to marriage at all. But I think fame is very wrapped up in this because there comes this point for Charlotte where I just don't think she wants to be scrutinized in that way anymore. And yet she recognizes that she's going to have to find a way of fending for herself in the future. And so marriage is an option. And Arthur is there and she's now alone. Her siblings have all gone, so she really is going to be alone when her father dies. And I think that's a very stark reality for her. Something of a wake up call. She says she can make some money from writing, but she did not earn so much money. Women were given so much less money than men. And so she wasn't making vast sums at all. It's easy to think, just because it was such a famous book, that she was making vast sums of money. She really wasn't. And so really her marriage to Arthur is very much a pragmatic choice. And she marries him. He's proved himself to be good and decent. Her father is very much against the match at the beginning because he has this perception, rightly, of Charlotte being this sort of great character. And to then marry his curate is not really what he had in mind for her. Right. So he's very against it from the beginning. So she has this kind of complicated tussle between reality and also she's a romantic. So there's a Big part of her that wanted this kind of deep, passionate love, something akin to what she'd felt for Heger, and that isn't there. So it's a rather sad beginning in some ways, to this marriage. He's passionately in love with her, though, which sort of makes up for it to some level. I think she does love the fact that someone's obsessed with her. That's something special for her. But she decides to marry him and in the end, Patrick agrees, her father agrees, and so she enters marriage with quite low expectations. But it is also her moment to shine.
- [61:03]
April Callahan
Yeah.
- [61:05]
Eleanor Houghton
So we see this kind of, on the one hand, this pragmatism. She's forever the clergyman's daughter. She wants something pragmatic and practical, perhaps that she could wear afterwards. So we imagine she's going to wear a gown that very much more. More like the going away dress that she ends up with, that's dark or
- [61:20]
April Callahan
whatever, because it was quite common, right, for women to wear their. On their wedding day, a dress they would wear again and again for practical
- [61:28]
Eleanor Houghton
reasons and especially for an older woman. Bear in mind that for this period, Charlotte is. Is 37, she's quite old, so it would have been completely expected that she would have worn something much more like the going away dress, which is a dark dress or a very pretty silk, but dark. But she doesn't. There's something in her that chooses white. Sadly, the dress does not survive. But we have images, photographs of reconstructions that were made, so we do know more or less what it's like. And there were descriptions, so that's how I've pieced together the image that I've created. But it is a surprising dress in some ways. So it is pragmatic, but it is still a very different choice from what we might have expected of her age and her class and the situation of the marriage, the circumstances of the marriage. But, yeah, there's this romantic element to Charlotte. We see it in Jane Eyre as well, don't we, where she gets dressed up for the wedding. And although that doesn't end quite as we expect in that middle part of the book, we still see this very strong pull to be this beautiful bride. And Charlotte has brought. Been brought up on this diet of romantic novels and silver folk literature. She wants to be the bride, she wants to play that role. And so the dress is relatively simple, relatively. I've seen similar garments in the va. But the bonnet is something else. The bonnet is effervescent, it's made of lace and sashing. And his coat Flowers on almost every surface. It is quite, again, quite a sight to behold. So we see this deep romanticism. Charlotte is playing the bride and she wants this moment for herself. So we have this kind of tension between practicality and romance. And I think that's rather wonderful, actually. And again, very poignant. I think we see something very personal of who and what she was. And she was described as looking like a snowdrop on her wedding day, which I think is very sweet. So, yeah, it's a complicated ensemble and she wore a little. A shawl with it, so it was definitely a statement. And how she chose to start married life, which I think is very fascinating insight into her mental state.
- [63:38]
April Callahan
And she does come to love Arthur. They go on their honeymoon, they go traveling, and there's a lot of records of her change of heart as she. She comes to love him, which. I really enjoyed reading that part.
- [63:50]
Eleanor Houghton
Yeah, it's lovely, actually, isn't it? And we all want to. We don't have a happy ending, sadly, because obviously we know what happens, but there is that real moment of something igniting. And I think when you read it, we're all cheering her on because we want this happiness for her after so much sadness and so much sorrow and so much challenge. But she does find love with Arthur.
- [64:12]
April Callahan
Yeah, unfortunately, right before she passes. Right. So for those who do not know, not long after her marriage, I think it's nine months, maybe, she dies quite tragically in the early stages of pregnancy. And as you write, despite what one might be tempted to think, Charlotte's death did not mark the end for the clothes she had owned and worn. And much like her legacy, these clothes live on. And I'm just hoping, in closing, what do you hope people will take away from this book about not just Charlotte, but also the storytelling capabilities of dress?
- [64:47]
Eleanor Houghton
I think, for me, the most important thing is that I would love people to start, not start, because I think other people have done this too. But to view clothing as a source of evidence that is as significant as a written source, that it's a primary source, not a secondary source. And I think all too often it's. We see it as something evocative or interesting or pretty, but we don't see it as something that is telling and speaking and illuminating and every bit as significant and weighty when handled correctly as a diary, a letter. These things are very important additions to a biography and to our understanding of a life and not just of that life. What's incredible about them is that they tell us so much more as well. They go far beyond that. They tell us about the society in which that person lived, about the codes and conventions that were placed upon those people. There's so much nuance held within dress. So much. And so many layers. So many layers. So I think the most important thing for me is to see it as what it is, which is a primary source that is weighty and important and significant.
- [66:00]
April Callahan
You've literally reconstructed a woman's life using clothing as a lens.
- [66:05]
Eleanor Houghton
Yeah, exactly. And I think, think I will say it. It was easier to do that for Charlotte. It would be harder to do that for somebody where you didn't have all the written sources alongside it. They very much work together. Because it would be much harder for me to work out the biographical details of her life without all those other written sources. So I'm not saying that it's more important. I'm saying it's as important.
- [66:26]
April Callahan
Yes, absolutely.
- [66:28]
Eleanor Houghton
I think that is what. It's not new, but I think it's a new way of saying it, perhaps, and partly because we just have such an amazing wardrobe of clothing, which, as you said, especially for that era and for someone middle class, is very rare. So it is. It's a remarkable find.
- [66:45]
April Callahan
Thank you so much, dress listeners, you're going to have to go out and get your hands on this book. I read it in, I think, two days. It's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing Charlotte's story with us.
- [66:57]
Eleanor Houghton
Thank you for having me. It's been a delight.
- [67:00]
Cassidy Zachary
Eleanor, thank you so much for taking us behind the scenes of Charlotte's life, however tragically short that it was.
- [67:06]
April Callahan
I was actually not prepared, April, for how sad or short Charlotte's life was, especially learning how much she struggled with self worth and self esteem and even her celebrity. And I cannot help but wonder what she and her sisters would actually think of their recognition today and the place they've cemented for themselves among history's great writers. And I would actually be especially curious about Charlotte's thoughts on her wardrobe being used to tell this story of her life, nearly 170 years since she left this earth. I would hope she would be quite pleased, as you will be, dress listeners, when you get your hands on this beautiful piece of fashioned storytelling. Again, the title of the book is Charlotte Bronte's Life Through Clothes. And you'll also not be disappointed by following Eleanor's wonderful Instagram at Eleanor Houghton, Historian. And that's H o u g H T O N Historian.
- [67:58]
Cassidy Zachary
That does it for us today, dress listeners, until next week, may you consider the autobiographical information hiding in your wardrobe. Next time you get dressed, make sure
- [68:08]
April Callahan
you're signed up for our newsletter. If you're not already, head to our website dressedhistory.com sign up for that newsletter where April and I once a month share things from April's armoire and Cassidy's clothes closet. Things we're working on behind the scenes, interesting research we're doing, our objects we're studying. But that's also where you become the first to know about our online classes and in person tours. And that includes my what Women Wore to the Revolution 1850s-1920s live online course Coming your way in June and then also our seven day Fashion History fueled Adventure in the World Fashion Capital Paris coming your way August 30th through September 6th.
- [68:46]
Cassidy Zachary
Some of you have already signed up, but we do still have more slots and we are very excited I will be there now on more or less a permanent basis. I have new Parisian treasures up my sleeve for this year's tour. So yeah, again you can head over to dresshistory.com to look at that full itinerary. And we'll be up to this year starting August 30th and then into to the very first week of September.
- [69:12]
April Callahan
And we get so many questions from all of you about our recommendations for fashion history books. So if you're interested you can always find a link in our show Notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop dressed and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.
- [69:30]
Cassidy Zachary
Do you love dress but you would like to skip the ads? You can now sign up for Ad free listening on our Dressed history Patreon Patreon. We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus which is available on Apple Podcasts. This subscription brings dress and also 27 other popular history podcasts all together ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our bio. Thank you as always for tuning in and more dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.